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Liping Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Liping Zhang.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Practice of Alibaba Cloud on Elastic Resource Provisioning for Large-scale Microservices Cluster

Cloud-native architecture is becoming increasingly crucial for today's cloud computing environments due to the need for speed and flexibility in developing applications. It utilizes microservice technology to break down traditional monolithic applications into light-weight and self-contained microservice components. However, as microservices grow in scale and have dynamic inter-dependencies, they also pose new challenges in resource provisioning that cannot be fully addressed by traditional resource scheduling approaches. The various microservices with different resource needs and latency requirements can create complex calling chains, making it difficult to provide fine-grained and accurate resource allocation to each component while maintaining the overall quality of service in the chain. In this work, we aim to address the research problem on how to efficiently provision resources for the growing scale of microservice platform and ensure the performance of latency-critical microservices. To address the problem, we present in-depth analyses of Alibaba's microservice cluster and propose optimized resource provisioning algorithms to enhance resource utilization while ensuring the latency requirement. First, we analyze the distinct features of microservices in Alibaba's cluster compared to traditional applications. Then we present Alibaba's resource capacity provisioning workflow and framework to address challenges in resource provisioning for large-scale and latency-critical microservice clusters. Finally, we propose enhanced resource provisioning algorithms over Alibaba's current practice by making both proactive and reactive scheduling decisions based on different workloads patterns, which can improve resource usage by 10-15% in Alibaba's clusters, while maintaining the necessary latency for microservices.

cs.DC↗

RIP-based Performance Guarantee for Low Rank Matrix Recovery via $L_{*-F}$ Minimization

In the undetermined linear system $\bm{b}=\mathcal{A}(\bm{X})+\bm{s}$, vector $\bm{b}$ and operator $\mathcal{A}$ are the known measurements and $\bm{s}$ is the unknown noise. In this paper, we investigate sufficient conditions for exactly reconstructing desired matrix $\bm{X}$ being low-rank or approximately low-rank. We use the difference of nuclear norm and Frobenius norm ($L_{*-F}$) as a surrogate for rank function and establish a new nonconvex relaxation of such low rank matrix recovery, called the $L_{*-F}$ minimization, in order to approximate the rank function closer. For such nonconvex and nonsmooth constrained $L_{*-F}$ minimization problems, based on whether the noise level is $0$, we give the upper bound estimation of the recovery error respectively. Particularly, in the noise-free case, one sufficient condition for exact recovery is presented. If linear operator $\mathcal{A}$ satisfies the restricted isometry property with $δ_{4r}<\frac{\sqrt{2r}-1}{\sqrt{2r}-1+\sqrt{2}(\sqrt{2r}+1)}$, then $r$-\textbf{rank} matrix $\bm{X}$ can be exactly recovered without other assumptions. In addition, we also take insights into the regularized $L_{*-F}$ minimization model since such regularized model is more widely used in algorithm design. We provide the recovery error estimation of this regularized $L_{*-F}$ minimization model via RIP tool. To our knowledge, this is the first result on exact reconstruction of low rank matrix via regularized $L_{*-F}$ minimization.

math.OC↗

An Error Correction Mid-term Electricity Load Forecasting Model Based on Seasonal Decomposition

Mid-term electricity load forecasting (LF) plays a critical role in power system planning and operation. To address the issue of error accumulation and transfer during the operation of existing LF models, a novel model called error correction based LF (ECLF) is proposed in this paper, which is designed to provide more accurate and stable LF. Firstly, time series analysis and feature engineering act on the original data to decompose load data into three components and extract relevant features. Then, based on the idea of stacking ensemble, long short-term memory is employed as an error correction module to forecast the components separately, and the forecast results are treated as new features to be fed into extreme gradient boosting for the second-step forecasting. Finally, the component sub-series forecast results are reconstructed to obtain the final LF results. The proposed model is evaluated on real-world electricity load data from two cities in China, and the experimental results demonstrate its superior performance compared to the other benchmark models.

cs.LG↗

A Hofmann-Mislove theorem for $c$-well-filtered spaces

The Hofmann-Mislove theorem states that in a sober space, the nonempty Scott open filters of its open set lattice correspond bijectively to its compacts saturated sets. In this paper, the concept of $c$-well-filtered spaces is introduced. We show that a retract of a $c$-well-filtered space is $c$-well-filtered and a locally Lindelöf and $c$-well-filtered $P$-space is countably sober. In particular, we obtain a Hofmann-Mislove theorem for $c$-well-filtered spaces.

math.GN↗

In-situ electrical and thermal transport properties of FeySe1-xTex films with ionic liquid gating

We combine in-situ electrical transport and Seebeck coefficient measurements with the ionic liquid gating technique to investigate superconductivity and the normal state of FeySe1-xTex (FST) films. We find that the pristine FST films feature a non-Fermi liquid temperature dependence of the Seebeck coefficient, i.e., S/T ~ AS lnT, and AS is strongly correlated with the superconducting transition temperature (Tc). Ionic liquid gating significantly raises Tc of FST films, for which the Seebeck coefficient displays a novel scaling behavior and retains the logarithmic temperature dependence. Moreover, a quantitative relationship between the slope of T-linear resistivity (A\r{ho}) and Tc for gated films is observed, i.e., (A\r{ho})1/2 ~ Tc, consistent with previous reports on cuprates and FeSe. The scaling behaviors of AS and A\r{ho} point to a spin-fluctuation-associated transport mechanism in gated FeySe1-xTex superconductors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

The Liver Tumor Segmentation Benchmark (LiTS)

In this work, we report the set-up and results of the Liver Tumor Segmentation Benchmark (LiTS), which was organized in conjunction with the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) 2017 and the International Conferences on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) 2017 and 2018. The image dataset is diverse and contains primary and secondary tumors with varied sizes and appearances with various lesion-to-background levels (hyper-/hypo-dense), created in collaboration with seven hospitals and research institutions. Seventy-five submitted liver and liver tumor segmentation algorithms were trained on a set of 131 computed tomography (CT) volumes and were tested on 70 unseen test images acquired from different patients. We found that not a single algorithm performed best for both liver and liver tumors in the three events. The best liver segmentation algorithm achieved a Dice score of 0.963, whereas, for tumor segmentation, the best algorithms achieved Dices scores of 0.674 (ISBI 2017), 0.702 (MICCAI 2017), and 0.739 (MICCAI 2018). Retrospectively, we performed additional analysis on liver tumor detection and revealed that not all top-performing segmentation algorithms worked well for tumor detection. The best liver tumor detection method achieved a lesion-wise recall of 0.458 (ISBI 2017), 0.515 (MICCAI 2017), and 0.554 (MICCAI 2018), indicating the need for further research. LiTS remains an active benchmark and resource for research, e.g., contributing the liver-related segmentation tasks in \url{http://medicaldecathlon.com/}. In addition, both data and online evaluation are accessible via \url{www.lits-challenge.com}.

cs.CV↗

Stochastic absolute value equations

We propose a new kind of stochastic absolute value equations involving absolute values of variables. By utilizing an equivalence relation to stochastic bilinear program, we investigate the expected value formulation for the proposed stochastic absolute value equations. We also consider the expected residual minimization formulation for the proposed stochastic absolute value equations. Under mild assumptions, we give the existence conditions for the solution of the stochastic absolute value equations. The solution of the stochastic absolute value equations can be gotten by solving the discrete minimization problem. And we also propose a smoothing gradient method to solve the discrete minimization problem. Finally, the numerical results and some discussions are given.

math.OC↗

Solvability of Multistage Pseudomonotone Stochastic Variational Inequalities

This paper focuses on the solvability of multistage pseudomonotone stochastic variational inequalities (SVIs). On one hand, some known solvability results of pseudomonotone deterministic variational inequalities cannot be directly extended to pseudomonotone SVIs, so we construct the isomorphism between both and then establish theoretical results on the existence, convexity, boundedness and compactness of the solution set for pseudomonotone SVIs via such an isomorphism. On the other hand, the progressive hedging algorithm (PHA) is an important and effective method for solving monotone SVIs, but it cannot be directly used to solve nonmonotone SVIs. We propose some sufficient conditions on the elicitability of pseudomonotone SVIs, which opens the door for applying elicited PHA to solve pseudomonotone SVIs. Numerical results on solving a pseudomonotone two-stage stochastic market optimization problem and randomly generated two stage pseudomonotone linear complementarity problems are presented to show the efficiency of the elicited PHA for solving pseudomonotone SVIs.

math.OC↗

Computing the dominant eigenpair of an essentially nonnegative tensor via a homotopy method

The theory of eigenvalues and eigenvectors is one of the fundamental and essential components in tensor analysis. Computing the dominant eigenpair of an essentially nonnegative tensor is an important topic in tensor computation because of the critical applications in network resource allocations. In this paper, we consider the aforementioned topic and there are two main contributions. First, we show that an irreducible essentially nonnegative tensor has a unique positive dominant eigenvalue with a unique positive normalized eigenvector. Second, we present a homotopy method to compute the dominant eigenpair and prove that it converges to the desired dominant eigenpair whether the given tensor is irreducible or reducible based on an approximation technique. Finally, we implement the method using a prediction-correction approach for path following and some numerical results are reported to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

math.NA↗

A Tensor-BTD-based Modulation for Massive Unsourced Random Access

In this letter, we propose a novel tensor-based modulation scheme for massive unsourced random access. The proposed modulation can be deemed as a summation of third-order tensors, of which the factors are representatives of subspaces. A constellation design based on high-dimensional Grassmann manifold is presented for information encoding. The uniqueness of tensor decomposition provides theoretical guarantee for active user separation. Simulation results show that our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art tensor-based modulation.

eess.SP↗

Harmonic Retrieval with $L_1$-Tucker Tensor Decomposition

Harmonic retrieval (HR) has a wide range of applications in the scenes where signals are modelled as a summation of sinusoids. Past works have developed a number of approaches to recover the original signals. Most of them rely on classical singular value decomposition, which are vulnerable to unexpected outliers. In this paper, we present new decomposition algorithms of third-order complex-valued tensors with $L_1$-principle component analysis ($L_1$-PCA) of complex data and apply them to a novel random access HR model in presence of outliers. We also develop a novel subcarrier recovery method for the proposed model. Simulations are designed to compare our proposed method with some existing tensor-based algorithms for HR. The results demonstrate the outlier-insensitivity of the proposed method.

eess.SP↗

Learning Continuous Face Representation with Explicit Functions

How to represent a face pattern? While it is presented in a continuous way in our visual system, computers often store and process the face image in a discrete manner with 2D arrays of pixels. In this study, we attempt to learn a continuous representation for face images with explicit functions. First, we propose an explicit model (EmFace) for human face representation in the form of a finite sum of mathematical terms, where each term is an analytic function element. Further, to estimate the unknown parameters of EmFace, a novel neural network, EmNet, is designed with an encoder-decoder structure and trained using the backpropagation algorithm, where the encoder is defined by a deep convolutional neural network and the decoder is an explicit mathematical expression of EmFace. Experimental results show that EmFace has a higher representation performance on faces with various expressions, postures, and other factors, compared to that of other methods. Furthermore, EmFace achieves reasonable performance on several face image processing tasks, including face image restoration, denoising, and transformation.

cs.CV↗

Monolithic Integrated Multiband Acoustic Devices on Heterogeneous Substrate for Sub-6 GHz RF-FEMs

Monolithic integration of multiband (1.4~ 6.0 GHz) RF acoustic devices were successfully demonstrated within the same process flow by using the lithium niobate (LN) thin film on silicon carbide (LNOSiC) substrate. A novel surface mode with sinking energy distribution was proposed, exhibiting reduced propagation loss. Surface wave and Lamb wave resonators with suppressed transverse modes and leaky modes were demonstrated, showing scalable resonances from 1.4 to 5.7 GHz, electromechanical coupling coefficients (k2) between 7.9% and 29.3%, and maximum Bode-Q (Qmax) larger than 3200. Arrayed filters with a small footprint (4.0 x 2.5 mm2) but diverse center frequencies (fc) and 3-dB fractional bandwidths (FBW) were achieved, showing fc from 1.4 to 6.0 GHz, FBW between 3.3% and 13.3%, and insertion loss (IL) between 0.59 and 2.10 dB. These results may promote the progress of hundred-filter sub-6 GHz RF front-end modules (RF-FEMs).

eess.SP↗

Airy-Gaussian vortex beams in the fractional nonlinear-Schrödinger medium

We address the propagation of vortex beams with the circular Airy-Gaussian shape in a (2+1)-dimensional optical waveguide modeled by the fractional nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Systematic analysis of autofocusing of the beams reveals a strongly non-monotonous dependence of the peak intensity in the focal plane on the corresponding Levy index, with a strong maximum at alpha =1.4. Effects of the nonlinearity strength, the ratio of widths of the Airy and Gaussian factors in the input, as well as the beam vorticity, on the autofocusing dynamics are explored. In particular, multiple autofocusing events occur if the nonlinearity is strong enough. Under the action of the azimuthal modulational instability, an axisymmetric beam may split into a set of separating bright spots. In the case of strong fractality (for alpha close to 1), the nonlinear beam self-traps, after the first instance of autofocusing, into a breathing vortical quasi-soliton. Radiation forces induced by the beam field are considered too, and a capture position for a probe nanoparticle is thus identified.

physics.optics↗

Context-aware PolyUNet for Liver and Lesion Segmentation from Abdominal CT Images

Accurate liver and lesion segmentation from computed tomography (CT) images are highly demanded in clinical practice for assisting the diagnosis and assessment of hepatic tumor disease. However, automatic liver and lesion segmentation from contrast-enhanced CT volumes is extremely challenging due to the diversity in contrast, resolution, and quality of images. Previous methods based on UNet for 2D slice-by-slice or 3D volume-by-volume segmentation either lack sufficient spatial contexts or suffer from high GPU computational cost, which limits the performance. To tackle these issues, we propose a novel context-aware PolyUNet for accurate liver and lesion segmentation. It jointly explores structural diversity and consecutive t-adjacent slices to enrich feature expressive power and spatial contextual information while avoiding the overload of GPU memory consumption. In addition, we utilize zoom out/in and two-stage refinement strategy to exclude the irrelevant contexts and focus on the specific region for the fine-grained segmentation. Our method achieved very competitive performance at the MICCAI 2017 Liver Tumor Segmentation (LiTS) Challenge among all tasks with a single model and ranked the $3^{rd}$, $12^{th}$, $2^{nd}$, and $5^{th}$ places in the liver segmentation, lesion segmentation, lesion detection, and tumor burden estimation, respectively.

eess.IV↗

Abnormal Staebler-Wronski effect of amorphous silicon

Great achievements in last five years, such as record-efficient amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells and cutting-edge perovskite/SHJ tandem solar cells, place hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) at the forefront of emerging photovoltaics. Due to the extremely low doping efficiency of trivalent boron (B) in amorphous tetravalent silicon, light harvesting of aforementioned devices are limited by their fill factors (FF), which is a direct metric of the charge carrier transport. It is challenging but crucial to develop highly conductive doped a-Si:H for minimizing the FF losses. Here we report intensive light soaking can efficiently boost the dark conductance of B-doped a-Si:H "thin" films, which is an abnormal Staebler-Wronski effect. By implementing this abnormal effect to SHJ solar cells, we achieve a certificated power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 25.18% (26.05% on designated area) with FF of 85.42% on a 244.63-cm2 wafer. This PCE is one of the highest reported values for total-area "top/rear" contact silicon solar cells. The FF reaches 98.30 per cent of its Shockley-Queisser limit.

physics.app-ph↗

Enhancement of Superconductivity Linked with Linear-in-Temperature/Field Resistivity in Ion-Gated FeSe Films

Iron selenide (FeSe) - the structurally simplest iron-based superconductor, has attracted tremendous interest in the past years. While the transition temperature (Tc) of bulk FeSe is $\sim$ 8 K, it can be significantly enhanced to 40 - 50 K by various ways of electron doping. However, the underlying physics for such great enhancement of Tc and so the Cooper pairing mechanism still remain puzzles. Here, we report a systematic study of the superconducting- and normal-state properties of FeSe films via ionic liquid gating. With fine tuning, Tc evolves continuously from below 10 K to above 40 K; in situ two-coil mutual inductance measurements unambiguously confirm the gating is a uniform bulk effect. Close to Tc, the normal-state resistivity shows a linear dependence on temperature and the linearity extends to lower temperatures with the superconductivity suppressed by high magnetic fields. At high fields, the normal-state magnetoresistance exhibits a linear-in-field dependence and obeys a simple scaling relation between applied field and temperature. Consistent behaviors are observed for different-Tc states throughout the gating process, suggesting the pairing mechanism very likely remains the same from low- to high-Tc state. Importantly, the coefficient of the linear-in-temperature resistivity is positively correlated with Tc, similarly to the observations in cuprates, Bechgaard salts and iron pnictide superconductors. Our study points to a short-range antiferromagnetic exchange interaction mediated pairing mechanism in FeSe.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

A Convergent Semi-Proximal Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers for Recovering Internet Traffics from Link Measurements

It is challenging to recover the large-scale internet traffic data purely from the link measurements. With the rapid growth of the problem scale, it will be extremely difficult to sustain the recovery accuracy and the computational cost. In this work, we propose a new Sparsity Low-Rank Recovery (SLRR) model and its Schur Complement Based semi-proximal Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (SCB-spADMM) solver. Our approach distinguishes itself mainly for the following two aspects. First, we fully exploit the spatial low-rank property and the sparsity of traffic data, which are barely considered in the literature. Our model can be divided into a series of subproblems, which only relate to the traffics in a certain individual time interval. Thus, the model scale is significantly reduced. Second, we establish a globally convergent ADMM-type algorithm inspired by [Li et al., Math. Program., 155(2016)] to solve the SLRR model. In each iteration, all the intermediate variables' optimums can be calculated analytically, which makes the algorithm fast and accurate. Besides, due to the separability of the SLRR model, it is possible to design a parallel algorithm to further reduce computational time. According to the numerical results on the classic datasets Abilene and GEANT, our method achieves the best accuracy with a low computational cost. Moreover, in our newly released large-scale Huawei Origin-Destination (HOD) network traffics, our method perfectly reaches the seconds-level feedback, which meets the essential requirement for practical scenarios.

math.OC↗